In the end, it was close at Xstrata. The voting system was highly complex but a rough summary is this: Qatar Holding, by saying last week that it would abstain on the £140m retention packages, ensured that the only way the Glencore deal could happen was if 75% of shareholders voted for the merger-cum-takeover without the awards. Swing voters knew what they had to do to get a thumbs-up for the transaction itself. Even then, the key resolution passed only by a whisker – 79% were in favour.

Should Xstrata chairman Sir John Bond take comfort in that? Of course not. It is humiliating for a company chairman to see his strong recommendation to shareholders ignored. His credibility as would-be chairman of Glenstrata was completely undermined and his resignation from that role was inevitable.

Bond mishandled this saga in many ways. First, he infuriated non-Glencore shareholders by proposing a retention package with no performance criteria. That looked like a reward for Xstrata's top executives simply for turning up for work.

Second, even after he was bludgeoned into attaching performance conditions, he failed to explain in detail who was getting what and why. The full list of the proposed 70 recipients was never published, making it impossible for outsiders to judge Xstrata's definition of an essential employee. The board's intransigence on that point was plain arrogant.

Third, he designed a revised voting formula that was so complex it almost delivered no deal at all. Some of us would say that would have been no bad thing. But it's clear that a majority of shareholders wanted to accept Glencore's improved terms.

Mixed messages on the retention package from 12% shareholder Qatar did not make Bond's life easy. But the fault ultimately lay in the lack of leadership on Xstrata's board. The result is a serious governance mess that will have to be addressed quickly by the new chairman of Glenstrata.